A sister of the two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing pleaded not guilty on Tuesday in a Hackensack courtroom to marijuana charges.

Bella Tsarnaeva was arrested in December 2012 after police responded to her Fairview home on a domestic violence report and found marijuana, according to court papers. Authorities said they had first found her live-in boyfriend, Ahmad Khalil, at the apartment, which they searched after smelling marijuana. Both Tsarnaeva and Khalil were indicted on April 10 with possession of marijuana with intent to distribute.

They declined to comment on Tuesday after their arraignment in Superior Court, where their attorneys entered not-guilty pleas on their behalves.

Tsarnaeva’s attorney, Mario Blanch, said he has applied for Tsarnaeva to be admitted into a pretrial intervention program, a form of probation that allows certain defendants to resolve their cases without a criminal record.

Tsarnaeva later left the building, her head wrapped in Khalil’s shirt to shield her from a photographer. Blanch said Tsarnaeva did not want to be photographed because people are already recognizing her on the streets and that she has even received death threats for what her brothers are accused of doing.

“She is a young woman, 24 years old, and through no fault of her own, she has been thrust into a public spotlight,” Blanch said. “This has been a huge tragedy for this country, and it has also been a huge tragedy for my client.”

Tsarnaeva’s two brothers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, are the two men accused of detonating two explosives near the finish line at the Boston Marathon on April 15. The explosives, made of pressure cookers filled with shrapnel, killed three people and injured hundreds.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was later killed in a shootout with police, but not before the pair allegedly killed an MIT police officer and hurled explosives at police cars during a chase.

. The younger brother, 19-year-old Dzhokhar, was captured, severely wounded, after being discovered hiding in a boat in nearby Watertown following a manhunt that shut down most of the Boston metro area. Federal authorities have charged him with using a weapon of mass destruction — an offense that carries the death penalty.

The investigation extended into North Jersey within a few days after the bombing when federal agents showed up at the West New York home of another sister, 22-year-old Ailina Tsarnaev. The agents interviewed the woman for several hours and left with computers, cell phones and plastic bags full of items. West New York police later said the woman was cooperating with authorities.